Code Geass: Recent Activity
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Recent updates to Code Geass: (Generated at 2025-06-22 15:54:35)
I can see many different interpretations, but black/white seems the most obvious.
Maybe "as an additional cost to cast ~, sacrifice a creature. [splashy effect]" and "players can't sacrifice creatures"?
That make the second one a creature with an appropriate name and the actual phrase in flavour text if that's ok.
It's the classic black/white split. Green cares more about method than ends; purset green doesn't really consider there to ''be'' an end. Red similarly is more about doing what feels right to itself right then, regardlesss of longer term ends. Black is the classic "Do whatever is needed, for my purpose"; white is "Do what is right."
But yeah; they could be flip sides of white.
As for what they do? A counter-spell; or white-counterspell of the "Players may not.." kind, makes sense fot the not-justified side. I'm tempted to suggest a wrath effect for the justified one. If you can make them prevent each other; that would be perfect.
How about: Ends being "As an additional cost, sacrifice any number of your creatures. Each player must sacrfifice that many." And means being: "Players may not sacrifice creatures; sacrifice this if you control no creatures."
Or Blue. I'm pretty sure blue also believes that the ends justify the means.
Also, if I was to point to the color that believes that the ends never justify the means, I think I would point to Green. Green believes in reality, truth, and never compromising. I know that this mindset is difficult to reconcile with Green's occasional 'Hulk Smash' attitude. But maybe it's worth pointing out that whenever Hulk is intelligent, yet a distinct personality from Banner, Hulk tends to be honest, direct, and refuses to compromise. See also Planet Hulk, or compare Hulk's friend Amadeus Cho with Reed Richards.
Also, also, I'm pretty sure that Red does not have an 'Ends justify the means' streak in it. It's just happy to see the world burn. But if you told a proud barbarian that they needed betray their clan to save it, they'd spit in your face and stab you.
The classic underlying disagreement between the protagonist and deuteragonist, Lelouch and Suzaku: whether the Ends Justify the Means or not.
> Lelouch: It looks like they treated you rather roughly. Now you know what they're really like, Private Kururugi. Britannia is rotten. If you wish to bring change to this world, then join me.
> Suzaku: So, is it true? Are you really the one who killed Prince Clovis?
> Lelouch: This is war. Why wouldn't I kill an enemy commander?
> Suzaku: And the poison gas? Those were civilians out there.
> Lelouch: A bluff to help things along. The result, not a single death.
> Suzaku: The result? That's all that matters to you, I suppose. Huh...
> Lelouch: Come join me. The Britannia you serve is a worthless dominion.
> Suzaku: Maybe that's true, but... but this nation, it can be changed for the better, and from within.
> Lelouch: Changed?
> Suzaku: And any ends gained through contemptible means aren't worth anything.
Lelouch is willing to kill civilians for the sake of overthrowing the corrupt Britannian empire and installing a new world order. Suzaku wants to change the Britannian empire from within.
So... what should a pair of cards titled "Ends Justify the Means" and "Ends Don't Justify the Means" do?
For that matter, what colour should they be? I think The Ends Don't Justify The Means is probably white, but might it be green? And what about the ruthless The Ends Justify The Means? Is that a black, red, or white philosophy?
:)
"Lloyd Asplund in unnecessarily complicated wording shocker!" :)
@Link: To make it a bit clearer that... Oh! Hmm. Yes, this is somewhat caught between two possible cards. I was considering allowing him to research all equipped combatants, not just ones you control; at which point I wanted this wording to make it clearer that it triggers once when a mech attacks and again when another mech blocks it. But with the "you control" wording, it's not so necessary, you're right.
Gemb, Wolftrainer Yeah; ok, you baited me.
[sarcasm]But what if your creature is attacking and blocking at the same time? How would you draw two cards off of that then?[/sarcasm]
Why not consolidate this into one sentence? "Whenever an equipped creature you control attacks or blocks?"
http://codegeass.wikia.com/wiki/Lloyd_Asplund , the comically sociopathic scientist who's obsessed with Knightmare research. He views Suzaku Kururugi as a mere component of the machine Lloyd wants to test, and a rather unreliable one.
That's true. It'd be quite natural to define a term for that if we wanted. "Haunted creature" was a term, and there could have been a card that counted the number of haunted creatures, although there wasn't. Going to a much more common phrase there are only ten cards in MtG's history that care about "enchanted creatures" and five of them are the Fencer's Magemark cycle! But yes, it's something I could easily do, if I had good reason. I can't think of a flavour reason to do that from the series, and I don't see a mechanical reason to do so either based on our playtest games. (Remember that the blue-red deck had an excessive number of Geasses, way more than is sensible, principally for the aim of trying to make this card work. My current reckoning is that in Code Geass limited, the typical expected number of geassed creatures on the table will be about 1.
I really need to watch the second season and comment on more cards :)
If you go with the geas-exile plan, you might be able to rescue cards referring to that. Say, write "cards under a geas" and define that in the rules to mean, "have been targeted by a geas at any point" or "has an ongoing 'can't be targeted by a geas' effect" etc. Or define it like haunt if that's not too complicated. Assuming geases are still usually represented by the exiled card being physically placed with its erstwhile target, it would be practically easy to track, and then maybe worth making it work if it's easy to do in the rules.
Blue in this set gets two different categories of researchers: lots of the artificers who build mecha and care about artifacts (Sakuradite Engineer, Inventive Technician, several more planned), and a handful of researchers from the Geass Institute / Geass Directorate, the secret underground cave research base from the second season.
Note that the current tentative plan for Geass phrasing is to make them all instants/sorceries and thus exiled, not "in play". Counting the number of Geasses in exile is a moderately weird thing to do, moderately breakable in conjunction with other "exile half your library" cards, and doesn't correspond to much in the series...
When you say "devotion", do you mean "decadence"?
I think a flat clean "Geass. Fight another target creature" is nicer, and usable on your own stuff (because that adds geass protection to your attacker)
Make it reveal + draw?
Or, possibly more sensible for a researcher; equipment instead of geass?
You also need at least a few "Count # of geass in play". Oooh, an obvious one would be to add # geass to controllers devotion. For yourself to boost to big #, or on someone else to overboost them to hard to use.
Haste is very exciting, since it allows you to steal and use a creature.
I thought it was pretty good although slightly fiddly keeping track of the power/toughness against that blue/red deck.
Maybe decadence would be better if you could choose one of the decadence cards and have it happen ‘y’ times where ‘y’ is the number of cards with decadence instead of having all the effects trigger (which becomes tricky to track). Or would that make the more expensive ones too powerful?
I wasn’t sure of the black and white control change cards (“Incriminate with Complicity” and “Debt of Loyalty” as they feel a bit more blueish than black/white. Having said that, they were useful.
I thought the "prepare" mechanic was good. Very morphish.
Overall I enjoyed the game! Well balanced against the blue/red deck
This got used in playtesting. It is indeed obviously pretty easy to trigger. It didn't feel backbreaking when it was used, so it might not be overpowered (though it could easily go up to 5 mana if need be). Amusingly in fact I think it was used on a creature that had already been stolen with a Propaganda Officer or a Geass of Desertion.
+1/+0 -> +1/+1 to reduce P/T-imbalancing tricks at common
try +2/+2 and trample
Can't Emrakul fly? :)
Having played with Knightmares a fair amount, the gameplay considerations are clear. Eject is meant to allow interactivity by allowing the knightmare to be destroyed in combat. For that to happen, the knightmares need to give a small enough bonus that there's any hope of destroying them in combat! So I think I'm fine with the Glasgow RPI-11 and the Burai Type-10 giving just +1/+1. I haven't tried the Gloucester RPI-209 yet, but +3/+4 sounds fairly high. The Gloucester Royal RPI-00/SC is definitely way overpowered with +3/+3 and first strike - it makes it pretty much impossible to kill in combat.
I don't care so much about the flavour feel. +1/+1 from a Glasgow is fine compared to Emrakul dying to 15 squirrels.
remove "an opponent controls"; cost U->1U
What would the cost of the not-opponent-restricted version be?
Curiosity is still one mana, but gives you the card later on in combat. Ocular Halo and Oracle's Insight are 4 mana and Quicksilver Dagger is 3, but those bypass the combat step entirely. Prophetic Ravings and Epiphany Storm are 1 mana but loot rather than drawing.
I'm going to guess 2 mana is probably fine. It's possible that 1 is fine, actually, but that kind of tweak can wait until I find out the relative power levels of the colours in the set.
This felt pretty bad in playtesting - just too expensive. Looking in Standard, it turns out that most sets don't even have any red commons at 6 mana, so taking this down to be another 5-drop seems feasible.
down to 4R from 5R
After a few playtests: it's... still not clear whether or not it is actually viable to have a control-change theme to this colour pair. It might be, it might not be.
Of the commons: Geass to Betray is perfect. Silvertongued Rebel is very expensive and probably not impactful enough - might want promoting to a full Threaten without the power restriction. Geass of Desertion is... probably fine, though needs more testing.
Plenty of the uncommons are great, like Propaganda Officer and Hostage Exchange. And something like Fervor of the Converted is really nice, though the specific details need tweaking.
I think the deck was mis-built - too many other Geasses getting in the way of the control-change Geasses. Master Manipulator doesn't really work, and Institute Pioneer definitely doesn't work. But that's fine - specific cards can change. The archetype feels like it might still be viable.